Azure Document Intelligence no longer parses xlsx files

Hi BLACHERE Pierre,

Thank you for reaching out on the Microsoft Q&A.
Many users are now reporting that Azure Document Intelligence (formerly Azure Form Recognizer) no longer reliably parses .xlsx Excel files. Although Excel/XLSX support was previously mentioned in documentation, multiple support threads and GitHub issues show that XLSX parsing especially for tables, layout, or images fails or behaves inconsistently. GitHub

The core of the problem seems to be that while newer API versions (such as 2024-02-29-preview, 2023-10-31-preview, and onward) are supposed to support Office formats including XLSX, in practice the service often rejects XLSX inputs returning errors like “Unsupported content” or simply failing to detect tables/layout, even for valid Excel files. Microsoft Learn Further, in many reported cases the service works fine for PDFs but shows limitations or outright failures for XLSX, which suggests a gap between what is documented and what is currently supported in production. GitHub

From the community’s experience and Microsoft staff responses, here are a few practical recommendations / workarounds that tend to increase the chance of success when dealing with Excel files:

Convert XLSX → PDF before sending to Document Intelligence. Because PDF support remains more stable, converting your Excel sheets into PDF ensures that layout, tables, and text extraction will work reliably.

• If you must use XLSX, try simpler spreadsheet files avoid complex features such as macros, multiple hidden sheets, extensive formulas or embedded objects. Clean up the file (e.g., save as a fresh copy) to remove metadata that might break parsing.
• Use the prebuilt-layout model (or equivalent layout/document models), not expecting full “table-detection + images + formatting” support as some features (tables, images, bounding boxes) may still be partially unsupported or unreliable for XLSX. GitHub+1
• Test with small, minimal XLSX files first if those work, you can incrementally add complexity, if even simple sheets fail, likely the service or region does not support XLSX properly at present.

while Azure documentation still lists XLSX among supported formats, many real-world experiences show that support is incomplete or unreliable right now. For critical workflows, the safest path is to convert Excel files to PDF before processing with Document Intelligence. If you continue to need XLSX support, consider limiting complexity (plain sheets, no macros) and thoroughly test but expect potential failures.

Please let me know if there are any remaining questions or additional details, I can help with, I’ll be glad to provide further clarification or guidance.

Thankyou!